Latest Microplastics Stories

With the world’s oceans becoming choked with plastic, it's easy to see that it's probably not a good thing. And when scientists in Australia found that corals on the Great Barrier Reef readily eat micro-plastic pollution, they were concerned. The reef is already threatened by the effects of climate change, problems from land-based run-offs, fishing, and expanding coastal development.

More than five trillion pieces of plastic garbage weighing a combined 269,000 tons are currently polluting the world’s oceans, according to the authors of a new paper published Wednesday in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

The tiny plastic particles polluting our seas are not only orally ingested by marine creatures, but also enter their systems through their gills, according to a new study led by the University of Exeter.

Microplastics – microscopic particles of plastic debris – are of increasing concern because of their widespread presence in the oceans and the potential physical and toxicological risks they pose to organisms.

The result of a 2010 ocean voyage around the world, a new study has found evidence of tiny “microplastics” in five large accumulations across the world, accumulations which match the five large open-ocean currents called gyres.